week 2 planning theory since 1945

7/29/2019 Week 2 Planning theory since 1945

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PLANNING THEORY SINCE1945

Pwk Pmd ft ub planning theory


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Early post war planning theory Conception of planning:

1. Town planning as physical planning.

2. Design as central to town planning.

3. The assumption that town planning necessarily involved

the production of 'master' plans or 'blueprint' plans

showing the same degree of precision in the spatial

configuration of land uses and urban form as the 'end-

state blueprint plans produced by architects orengineers when designing buildings and other human-

made structures.


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Town planning as physical planning Physical planning as opposed to 'social' and 'economic'

planning. Keeble (1952, p. 1) put it on the first page of hisbook: Town and Country Planning might be described as theart and science of ordering the use of landand the characterand siting of buildings and communicative routes . . .

Keeble suggested that town planning may greatly assist inthe realisation of the aims of these other kinds of planning'.Then implicit in this statement is an assumption that socialand economic ends could be advanced by physical means

This thesis was appropriately termed physical, architecturalor environmental determinism (see Broady, 1 968, Chap. I)


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Town planning as physical planning The third point concerns Keeble's assertion that town

and country planning is not 'political' planning ?. Assuming that town and country planning was

conceived of as physical planning, the question

naturally arises as to what technical skills werethought relevant, which brings us to the second

component of the post-war conception of planning.


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Town planning as urban design The term 'civic' design was also much used

Town planning was regarded as an 'extension' ofarchitectural design (or to a lesser extent civil

engineering) in the literal sense of being concerned

with the design of whole groups of buildings andspaces - with 'townscape rather than the design of

individual buildings and their immediate sites, and

also in the sense that architecture too was seen tobe an exercise in the physical design of built forms.


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Town planning as urban design Architects who worked as town planner:

GB: Patrick Abercrombie, Frederick Gibberd andThomas Sharp

Netherland: H.P. Berlage

Europe: Le Cor busier

Books written specifically about urban design, such

as Frederick Gibberd's Town Design ( published

in1953) , were regarded as standard texts on town

planning


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Town planning as urban design

Theoretical new townSource: Keeble, 1952 (1969), Figure 30

Shops

Offices

Government

EntertainmentEducation

Dwellings

Centres and sub-centres

Industry

Open space


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Town planning as urban design Raymond Unwin - a leading exponent of this

concern with aesthetics - stressed the need forbeauty in urban life: 'Not even the poor can live by

bread alone' (cited in Creese, 1967, p. 71).


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A design for the centre of a theoretical new town

Source: Keeble, 1952, Figure 78


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A plan for an urban region

Source: Keeble, 1 952, Figure 1 1


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Town plans as detailed blueprints or

'master' plans Plans were seen as 'blueprints' for the future form of

towns - as statements of 'end-states' that would one daybe reached.

The first generation of development plans localauthorities were required to produce under the Town

and Country Planning Act 1947 also adopted thisapproach.

Detailed zoning plans specified how particular siteswere to be used and developed

'programming' plans that showed the stages at whichthe envisaged development of different parts of theplans would be carried out to 'complete' the plans.


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Town plans as detailed blueprints or

'master' plans

Example:

Soria y Mata's nineteenth-century plans for linear cities

Le Corbusier's plans for the

'contemporary city' (and later

the 'radiant city')

Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for

'Broadacre City

Ebenezer Howard's 'Garden

City'


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conclusion The plan was not just an approach to town planning

as an exercise in physical planning and urbandesign but also a normative concept of the ideal

urban environment. In other words, the tracts and

textbooks published at the time not only advancedan extended definition of planning but they also

embodied certain values about the kinds of

environment which, it was believed, should berealised through town planning.


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The values of post-war planning theory

The normative context: a culture of social reform andconservative sentiments.

A 'formal or 'definitional' theory of planning: Townplanning as an exercise in physical planning and designrepresented a particular theory of what kind of an

activity town planning is. Post-war planning was also driven by a distinct set of

values: They reflected the responses of social reformersand middle-class intellectuals to the dreary industrial

cities which had grown up in the Victorian age, andwere a curious mixture of radicalism andconservativism.


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radical Utopianism:

Robert Owen the creator of the famous modelsettlement of New Lanark - was both a pioneer of themodel village movement, which aimed to improve theliving and working conditions of working-class people,

and an early socialist. Ebenezer Howard's ideas for the creation of completely

new 'garden cities', in which land would be collectively

owned, came to represent at the end of the century thedistillation and most complete expression of this radicalUtopian socialism


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Howard combined radical socialist proposals for the

collective ownership of land in his garden cities withvery traditional and, in this respect conservative,

notions of urban size and form (the socalled 'social

democratic)


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THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR

PLANNING

A normative theory of town planning:

a theory of how town planning should be approached a theory of the kinds of urban environments town planning

should seek to create

The deep values we hold often take the form of taken-

for-granted assumptions and norms and, because ofthis, our values are often not explicitly articulated oranalysed.

These values become apparent when we examine thekind of urban environments that were judged byplanners at the time to be of high quality or 'ideal'.


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THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR

PLANNING

Four broad planning principles of post war planning:

the general approach to creating better cities. Thisapproach can be described as 'Utopian comprehensiveness.

the general aesthetic values which informed (British) post-war planning.

the view most town planning theorists took of the idealurban structure, namely, a highly ordered view of urbanstructure.

a general assumption that all these principles were self-

evident and thus 'commonsense' principles in themselves,commanding a consensus amongst all sections of thepopulation (assumed consensus over the aims of planning.)


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Utopian comprehensiveness

Three aspects of the post-war 'Utopian

comprehensive' approach to planning: typical expressions of modernist 'functional' design

and aesthetics (e.g. Antonio Sant'Elia's La Citta

Nuova, Tony Garnier's La Cite Industrielle and LeCorbusier's Ville Radieuse). In appearance, the form

of the modern city was one of plain, geometrical,

'functional buildings standing at regular intervals ina sea of 'free-flowing' space.


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Antonio Sant'Elia's sketch for La Citta Nuova, 1914


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To be continued

week 2 planning theory since 1945

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